


To Mars and back

by aRegularJo



Category: The Martian (2015), The Martian - All Media Types, The Martian - Andy Weir
Genre: Friendship, crewmateship, loveship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-25 20:06:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4974523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aRegularJo/pseuds/aRegularJo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loosely connected oneshots about love. In all its forms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stories

**Author's Note:**

> I don't usually write anything based on movies and certainly not on books, but whaddaya know, here I am. I hope it's interesting. More to come, I think.

_Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. — Carl Sagan_

As part of Annie Musgroves’ post-Ares media blitz, someone — it certainly wasn’t actually Watney, though his name was on the cover under the word ‘by’ — wrote a children’s book called _The Man Who Lived on Mars_ , a very watered-down retelling of the various things Watney did to keep himself alive on Mars for a year and a half. Basically NASA propaganda, it was on the New York Times kids’ bestseller list for a while; was readily available in any NASA or Smithsonian gift shop for years after. When Stella (named for Chris’s Grandma Estelle, but nobody believed them, of course) was born, they received five copies from well-meaning distant relatives. Beth sighed, donated four of them, and put the last high on a bookshelf in the soon-to-be-baby’s room (instead of going for any sort of celestial theme, which many had expected, they’d firmly grounded the kid on earth with a jungle-themed nursery).

The book stayed there, forgotten among toys and dolls and games and other books, for more than four years. One day, though, when Beth told her to pick out a book for bedtime, Stella pulled it out. It was inevitable, Beth rationalized in retrospect. “I wanna read this one,” Stella announces, direct like she always was (Chris said she inherited it from her; she disagreed). She curls into Beth’s side with her stuffed Ferdinand and slaps the book into Beth’s lap.

Beth’s eyes bug out involuntarily. Stella knows abstractly that, once upon a time, her parents were astronauts: They both went to her preschool last year and talked to her class and showed picture of their nineteen sols on Mars. They’d passed around Martian dirt (given as a gift to her by Martinez after his Ares V mission) and helped the kids build spacesuits. And certainly, many of her toys were space-themed — a byproduct of the circles her parents traveled in. They’d been to the Air and Space Museum plenty of times, went to the White House for an Ares astronauts reunion on the fifteenth anniversary of the Ares I landing just last month. But they haven’t gotten into why Mom hugs Uncle Mark a little more tightly than Uncle Martinez.

“Mommy,” Stella said patiently, flapping the book in Beth’s lap. “Let’s read.”

She gently took the book from Stella, and took a deep breath. “Actually, Stel, this book is pretty special,” she started. “This book doesn’t have pretend characters. It has real people. And you know them.”

“Who?” Stella asks, puzzled.

She turned to the fourth page, the one with the picture of the whole crew, looking patriotic pre-launch in their suits, helmets under their arm, eyes to the sky. “Well, you know that Mommy and Daddy went to Mars, right?”

“Yea, you were ‘stronauts. The book is about you?” she was excited, grabbed the book back to examine the pictures closely. Her finger rested on the head-and-shoulders image of her dad, clearly identifying him.

“Sort of,” Beth carefully lifted an arm around Stella’s shoulder to envelop her in a side-hug, pointed her finger at the six characters as she named them. They’re drawn in the generic watercolor brushstrokes typical of mid-quality kids’ books — after four-plus years of parenting, Beth is familiar with the medium. It doesn’t look like her. “You know that Uncle Mark, and Uncle Martinez, and Commander Melissa were all on our trip too, right? And this is …. uh, Herr Vogel. He lives in Germany, all the way across the ocean.” Vogel, with his five kids, hasn’t made it to suburban Maryland in three years. She shuts the book so that Stella will focus.

“Is he nice?” Stella asks.

“Very nice. Daddy and I lived with him for two and a half years when we were in space.” Her hands drift absentmindedly through Stella’s blonde hair, and she sighs. “But, Stel, you know how we talked about how space can be fun, but scary? How if you aren’t careful, you could float away and how we had to be very careful not to get hurt?”

“Yep,” Stella replies, and Johanssen could tell she’s losing interest, quickly. “Can we read now?”

“Soon, I promise, Stel. I ... need to tell you something before we read. When you’re in space, when you’re on Mars, dangerous things happen. Even when you’re being careful. And when Daddy and I were on Mars, something very dangerous happened. There was a bad storm, and we had to leave Mars, or we would be in very big trouble. But while we were walking to board the spaceship home, we got separated —” here she takes a deep breath, wonders how the parenting books would tell her to address this situation — “and Uncle Mark got lost. He didn’t get on board the ship. We thought — we thought he had … died.” She finishes her sentence carefully.

“Died, like Landon’s kitten?” Stella’s voice rises in alarm. Her friend's tiny pet had died suddenly, four months ago, a terrible disease that nobody had anticipated. One day Stella had been playing with it and the next — poof. Gone. She’d been hysterical.

“We _thought_ he died,” Beth rubs Stella’s shoulder to subvert a meltdown. “But you know Uncle Mark; you saw him on Skype last week. He’s alive. But when we thought he was dead, we were very, very sad. I cried, a lot. Your dad —” she pauses, because the story now inches dramatically close to how they got together, and that is not a story Stella’s hearing for ten years — “your dad was very sad too. He kept having bad dreams.”

“Like I get sometimes?”

“Just like you get sometimes,” she replies. “Anyways,” she shifts — Ferdinand has fallen behind them, and she picks him up and puts him on Stella’s lap. “It turned out we were wrong. Mark was alive, but he was all alone. He had to be very smart and figure out how to grow his own food. And once we figured out he was alive, we turned our spaceship around and back to pick him up. This book is all about what happened.” She taps the cover. “Do you still want to read?”

“Yes please,” Stella says. “Get a move on.” It’s a phrase she picked up from Marissa Martinez, who uses it on her children frequently.

They read the book, which is simple and noble and streamlined and includes far fewer curse words that Johanssen remembers: Mark is lost; he grows potatoes; he finds Pathfinder; he communicates with NASA. NASA finds pictures; launches and loses Iris; gets a call from the Chinese space agency. The Hermes crew first does experiments, then heroically decides to go back for him (the space-mutiny aspect is glossed over). Stella cheers when her dad and Commander Melissa rescue Uncle Mark.

“The end,” Beth reads on the last page.Stella is quiet as she stares at the final image, of Uncle Mark addressing new astronaut recruits. “So?” she nudges her. “What’d you think?”

“Uncle Mark is still alive?” she checks suspiciously. “I can still see him?”

“Of course. You saw him last week. We can call him tomorrow and you can see him again.” She’ll let Stella call if she really needs the confirmation, but it is bedtime and this kid is a grump if she doesn’t get enough sleep.

“You and Daddy flew all the way back to Mars to get him back?”

“Of course. We love Uncle Mark.” Parenthood — having to break things down to their most fundamental, their gentlest — has given Johanssen a softer, kinder vocabulary and outlook. Since high school, since MIT, she’s defined herself by her edges, her independence. She’s still got those at work, is still blunt and foul-mouthed and sharp-eyed and punkily contrarian in almost all circumstances, but that’s not necessarily what she wants for her kids.

“If I got left, would you fly back to Mars for me?” “Sweetie, you’re not going to Mars anytime soon. You don’t need to worry.” She’s gotta get through kindergarten next year; besides, the colonization plan has been delayed indefinitely as Mark works through the large-scale crop thing for NASA. “But yes. We love you, too. To Mars and back. Promise.” It’s true: The all-consuming, eye-opening, nearly nauseating feeling of loving her children is the closest feeling to zero gravity she will ever experience again. Of course she would turn the Hermes around if Stella was stranded on Mars. The word ‘mutiny’ didn’t come close to describing the limits to which she would go.

Stella stares at her, then finally nods. She’s intense, their daughter. That also isn’t surprising. Then she yawns, her blue eyes scrunching tightly.

“You’re tired, Stel. You ready for the nightlight?”

“Yeah,” she sighs. “But Mommy? You can stay with me till I fall asleep.” It’s not a question.

“Of course,” she replies, and flicks the nightlight in the base of Stella’s lamp on. She waves her hand so the smart-sensor lights dim and then turn completely off. Stella snuggles into her side.

She expects to only stay the five minutes until Stella’s breathing evens out, but is jolted awake nearly an hour later by Chris, who looks more than a little alarmed. “Beth? Everything OK?” Since her little brother was born last year, Stella has decided that only babies have both parents present at bedtime; since then, they’ve rotated. Chris, she assumes, was down in the den reading medical journals.

“Yeah,” she whispers, carefully extracting herself from Stella’s slack grip. She picks up the book, which has slid under the kid. “Look what she picked for bedtime reading.”

His eyes widen at the title, and he jerks his head toward the hallway. She follows her husband, book in hand. “Did you read it to her?” he asks, arms folding across his chest and shoulders hunching.

“Of course! If I had said no she wouldn’t been even more adamant. You’ve met our kid, right?”

“How … Did you explain it to her?”

“I mean, not everything. But yeah, we went through that it’s her Uncle Mark. She wants to call him tomorrow. I was worried she’d insist on seeing him before bed, but she took it OK. She asked if she got lost on Mars, if we would come for her, and I said yes.” His posture relaxes slightly but his eyes are still dark with worry. She reaches a hand out to his shoulder. "She's fine. I promise. I'm sorry I didn't call you in." This is something he would have wanted to be present for.

His jaw works through it, and he nods vigorously, as if to shake it off. "She's really ok?"

"At the end of the day I think it just sounds like a story to her."

"Alright. Bed? It's getting late. And you already passed out once." And with that, he’s back to normal.

One of the things that had first attracted her to Chris was his cockiness, his brashness — it repelled but intrigued her, gave their interactions a frisson that wasn’t present when palling around with Martinez and Watney. Hooking up had been strictly forbidden by NASA (later, she found out Lewis had also given the guys guys A Talk, making it extra-illicit), but pre-Mars she’d had it in the back of her mind that once back on Earth, they’d have a very hot hookup. After everything that happened, through now, it’s his vulnerabilities that make her love him.

She reaches out and squeezes his hand. She has more work to do, but he’s definitely right that she’s exhausted. They double-check on both kids and she tucks her head under his chin as they head into their room. They quietly change, brush teeth, wash faces, before sinking into the bed. He hits the light, and she folds across him.

She gets asked, not infrequently, about what the biggest difference in her pre- and post-Ares life. Usually she states the obvious: she is married, she has children; both things she’d not quite banked on before that. But what really changed, she thinks, is that she is now interdependent. She had defined her own badassery without caring what others thought for nearly thirty years, and that hadn’t changed, but she now realized she is part of an ecosystem of kindness knitting her to others. It’s a source of strength she would have raised an eyebrow at ten years ago. Maybe the surprise isn’t so much that she is married but that she sleeps soundly while entwined with Chris. That’s her last thought before she falls asleep.


	2. Haircut

_We are an impossibility in an impossible universe — Ray Bradbury_

Astronaut Bootcamp had included many unusual courses, but one that most people would not have thought about was hair cutting.

The sessions were prosaic, really only a PowerPoint on grooming in space and a couple of general tips from a Houston-area stylist: how to brush the hair in the right direction, how to eyeball an acceptably even trim, how to vacuum the hair carefully since a floating strand of hair, even in the chambers with gravity, could prove disastrous (of course, that was NASA's assessment before Watney got stranded. Lewis imagines its assessment would be more measured now).

Given their skill sets, it was unsurprising that Beck and Johanssen were adept at executing functional trims — they both had practiced fingers and precise eyes. But her country-fried upbringing meant that Melissa had been shearing sheep and cutting younger cousins' hair practically her entire life, too, and that meant she was the most confident and comfortable with the scissors and razors.

(For the record: Vogel was competent enough at a man’s cut in a very German way, and Lewis did not understand how Watney or Martinez had not nicked their carotids shaving at some point in their lives, since they were both beyond hopeless.)

Once they’d launched, Johanssen had given Lewis a trim every eight weeks, working admirably to maintain the layers and sideswept bangs that Lewis loved. She did more than an adequate job, but by the time they decided to double their time in space it was an ever-more-futile exercise as layers grew out and grew lank. Initially, Johanssen had refused to cut any of the guys' hair, because Feminism, though as she and Beck increasingly became an established sub-unit of the team on their first return sweep, she took over cutting his hair (on their final trip home, Beck also started growing out a man-bun, which Lewis would have hacked off since it looked ridiculous, which Beck probably knew.) On the leg to Mars (the first time), Johanssen had asked Beck to re-bob her hair every two months, which Lewis in retrospect probably should have taken as A Sign. Also on that first leg of the journey, Lewis had sat down all four of her boys for a trim monthly, efficiently dispatching all of them within an hour. She'd been strangely bereft when she was suddenly only responsible for Martinez and Vogel.

After she caught Watney as he Iron Man-ned around the Martian atmosphere, after Vogel took off his helmet, after Johannsen nearly vomited from the smell, after Martinez shoved him into a shower stall and helped him take an hour-long sponge bath, after Beck checked him over carefully to make sure that none of his (numerous) broken ribs had punctured a lung or caused internal bleeding, after they have all taken deep breaths and cried a little bit, Lewis looks at him critically. Looking at him is an overwhelming feeling.

Most of the feeling comes from the fact that he is _here_ — alive and present and solid when she thought she would never see him, not even his body, again — but much of it is also alarm at his physical state. Saying he looked like shit is actually an understatement: His rib cage punches out erratically as angry bruises bloom all over his chest, his muscles have wasted away practically past the point of nothingness, and his skin sags uselessly from his bones. His hair is thin and patchy, too long in some places and practically nonexistent in others. There are sores all over his body from where his suit had rubbed his skin raw, and wet scars from where infections couldn’t heal because, well, Mars. His pallor is sallow and waxy, his breathing is labored, and his teeth look like half of them had cavities. His voice is raspy — she suspects he sustained some windpipe damaging, flying around out there like a madman. Beck has told her privately that once he recovers a little strength, he’s going to need some field surgery. But Annie Musgroves has made it clear that he needs to record a message to the world, stat, and that all of them would have to start doing interviews as soon as the comms were close to real time. Thus he needed to look — well, he needed to look like he had not just spent nearly two years living alone on Mars. And soon.

"You need a haircut, Watney," she says calmly. It’s the only first step they can take. They’re all gathered around him in the sick bay — really just a cot in Beck's work station, a narrow galley stacked high with medical supplies and two microscopes. Between his condition’s and the ship’s, he’s probably spending the journey home there.

"Can I at least wait till after I get a nap, or is this an Annie Musgroves thing? I promise, a good night's sleep will make me a lot less Martian and a lot more human. Beck, when can I go back to my quarters?"

They all trade glances. "Actually, yours and Martinez's quarters started having heating malfunctions after the slingshot maneuver," Vogel says. "Hermes is designed to be repaired in between missions, and they didn’t get a chance to fix the problem. The rooms are very unbearable right now, not fit for sleeping."

"Well, where's Martinez sleeping?"

This will be amusing, so Lewis points a glance at Beck to explain himself. It's the least he can do after breaking the No Hitting On Johanssen Or You Will Be Ejected Into Space rule. "My old room, actually," Beck says, after a beat. Both he and Johanssen blush, and Johanssen stares at the ceiling tiles. Good. They both deserve it.

Watney’s brow furrows. "Where are _you_ sleeping? In here?"

Martinez smirks before emitting a low wolf-whistle. "Oh, _he_ moved into Johanssen's room, buddy."

"Really? Nicely done! Million Mile High Club!" Still flat on the bed, he raises a hand for a high five from Beck.

"I made that joke months ago. Just because you were stranded on Mars doesn't mean you can swipe it," Martinez grouses. “You can’t use Mars as an excuse for ever, you know.” Lewis is relieved they’ve fallen easily into their shit-talking routine.

"If you return that high five you're sleeping in the lounge," Johanssen informs Beck with a smile, though Lewis knows it's faux-irritation for show. He puts his hands up in surrender — he wasn't going to do so, anyways, Lewis knows, it's similarly a routine for an audience, to make Mark laugh. She's beginning to think that whatever they have might be real. "And if you don't put that hand down, I will break any of your remaining ribs, Watney." That might not be for show.

"You're on the monitors for at least the next several weeks, so you're staying here for now," Lewis says, but gently. "And yes, the haircut will need to be soon. Annie wants a photo to show you off. And the rest of us have to file a report in the next hour of how the maneuver went down. She'll want it then, so we need to do it soon." She turns to Johanssen. "Can you go grab him some real, clean clothes from his old room?"

“Sure,” Johanssen replies. “Now?” she checks, unsure if she's being dismissed.

“Yes, and then I’ll need you to draft a memo on the EVA rescue, please. Beck, I need you to write up both a medical report. Vogel, draft a report on the use of the bomb — make it sound like we didn’t almost blow up the Hermes. And Martinez, I need something on the launch and our path to the interception. Again —”

“Don’t make it sound like we almost blew up the Hermes? You got it, chief.” There is work to do, and they file out.

“And I’m cleaning you up,” she informs Watney grimly. They have 210 more days, after this, to rehab him back to functionality for Earth. There are many more steps, and she'll help him — they all will — starting tomorrow. But right now they just need to get him to look not-terrible in photos. After a quick once-over she carefully reaches out to feel his scalp for any sores. There appear to be a few cuts from his piss-poor attempts at haircutting, but it seems alright. “When was the last time you looked in the mirror, Watney?”

“A real one? Back in the Hab, I guess.”

“Alright. Prepared to be scared.” She rummages through the cabinets to find a mirror Velcroed to a door. She turns it toward him, taking a deep breath.

“Wow,” he says after a second. “I actually look like a Martian. You think, like, between the radiation and the Martian-soil potatoes, my genes have mutated enough that I might be a different species right now? I could win the Nobel Peace Prize for kick-starting interplanetary interspecies relations.”

“You certainly look like it,” she says lightly, trying for levity. “I’m not going to shave all your hair off —” truthfully, he might look like the survivor or a genocide or famine at that point, and she would again land on Annie Musgroves' shit list — “but I’m going to cut it down pretty close, OK?” Johannsen quietly pops her head in, sets down a pair of pants and a navy NASA pullover, and goes to write her report. Lewis isn't sure if Watney even notices.

Lewis is careful as she goes about cutting his hair. Powders the back of his neck, where the skin is scaly and flaking off. Gently washes the hair — again — before toweling it dry and combing it carefully, trying to gauge how well she can cover the bald patches with longer hair. Grabbing the shears, she pulls the strands through her fingers to find an even length. She uses the smaller set of blending shears to shape the hair around his ears, skills honed on Vogel for the last nearly-two years. She finishes up with a razor on the nape of his neck, smoothing the rough hacks he did without a mirror into an acceptable hairline.

Once done, she hands him the mirror again. He still looks like shit, gaunt and haunted and bearing the marks of his months. But he looks cared-for now, a bit more human than he did twenty minutes ago. “You should put on these clothes,” she says, gesturing to them carefully. “I’m going to review the reports and compile them into a briefing. Then we’re going to take photos, one of just you and one of the whole crew, in the living room.” She’ll put him in the center of the first row, in between her and Johanssen since they're the most slender, bulk him up with blankets. “Sound good?”

“Sounds great,” he replies, his characteristic humor — the reason he survived this entire fucking, godforsaken ordeal — an ebb in his voice. It’s still there, just subdued. She’s no doubt he’ll get it back before they land.

She reaches out, ruffles the hair she just cut. “Mark,” she finishes, her voice husky, “We are so glad to have you back.”

“Thanks, Commander,” he says, a small smile present. He’ll be OK, she knows.

They all will.


	3. Late-night conversation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure about this one, which I wrote pretty quickly on Columbus Day. I have a feeling I may pull some of the threads for something far more refined, but I wanted a bro-type piece between Watney and Beck before they hit Mars. I thought it would be interesting to hash through if Mark, in a coded way, told him to slow his roll re: Johanssen. Hopefully this is interesting to at least one other person.
> 
> Also, every chapter is going to have a dig at Annie Montrose. In my head, she's the crew's least favorite person, for no particular reason except it's an in-joke.

_You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him discover it in himself — Galileo_

There are no atheists in foxholes, and there are no secrets on space shuttles (come to think of it, there aren’t any atheists there, either. Just scientists, which is basically an extra-logical religious preference, Mark decides). It’s obvious from Day One — okay, fine, Day Twenty-One — that Beck has a thing for Johanssen. Mark can’t quite tell if it’s mutual, but there’s a wild-child unpredictability to their favorite hacker that makes Watney think she would definitely go for Beck, if she wasn’t such a damn professional, and some weird subtextual vibes that make it clear that she trusts Beck in a different way than she trusts the rest of them. At any rate, it’s bound to make a year in space fun. He doesn’t mean that sarcastically, either — it would be genuinely delightful. Like, pop-some-popcorn level of fun, especially for him and Martinez (he should check to make sure they’ve actually _stocked_ popcorn). There was something about Beck’s combination of smirky cocksureness and sincere Captain America vibe that he thought would clash entertainingly with Johanssen’s give-no-fucks naivete. At the very least, it would be hella entertaining. 

Anyways, Training Day Twenty-One. Why Training Day Twenty-One? They’d started with your standard 50-minute 10k run (no sweat. Okay, lots of sweat, but no metaphorical sweat), an hour in the gym building muscle, two hours getting thrown about in the Centrifuge, then five hours underwater, decked out in space suits as they practice making external repairs to the Hermes. It had been a really lovely time, actually. Not at all back-breakingly awful. 

After they were finally dismissed, Johanssen shrugged off her suit but then sunk back into the water to, Mark guessed, stretch out sore muscles. In a tank two-piece (she looked good, he’d note objectively. No ugly astronauts allowed on Ares III), she starfished out, drifting lazily across the 50-meter pool. “I’m dead,” she called. “Just leave me. Tell my parents no need to worry about me in space, because I’m gonna die right _here_.” 

The six of them had bonded easily, automatic friendships buoyed by similar senses of what Mark might have to call _super-duper juvenile humor_. That mostly involved making fun of each other, so Vogel immediately chucked a pull floatie five feet to her right. Martinez yelled — well, Martinez yelled something that he probably thought was funny. As she floated past them, Mark splashed some water at her with his foot, but only Beck leaned down and said something to her nobody else could hear. Quick as a flash she reached up and pulled him in with her, white T-shirt and basketball shorts and all. A peal of laughter shrieked through the aquatic center as he dunked her in retaliation. He and Martinez started egging them on nonsensically in what was, Mark realized as he looked back, an underwater tickle fight. Vogel laughed at the two of them making fun of the other two. Lewis, toweling off her hair, noticed them. 

“Come on, everyone,” she called. “It’s been a long seven hours. Let’s get some grub and go to bed.”

“Sure you don’t want to come in, Commander?” Johanssen grinned. 

“Positive. Let’s go.” 

“You heard her,” Beck said, and grabbed her in a fireman’s carry in the shallow end, which caused more laughter. Once she was upright and on land, Mark reached out and gave her a noogie, because he’s a compassionate crewmate. Martinez had made a quip, Mark quipped back. As Johanssen finally caught her breath to make a retort, Mark glanced over her head (it’s not hard, she’s basically the size of a large fourth grader) and saw Beck make the dopiest face at her. Really, someone should have told him to have more self-respect. And in that moment, Mark realized: This is gonna be fun. Then he looked over and saw that Commander Lewis had noticed as well. Then he thought: _This is gonna be extra fun_. It was the first time of many he thought _I should bring popcorn_. 

The other reason he remembers it was Training Day Twenty-One was because that night, at dinner, Commander Lewis had sat next to the four guys while Johanssen was talking to a clutch of her Fellow Group 27’ers in the Caf — she was the first of them to be selected for an actual mission (since she was the best of them, no big deal), and occasionally still ate with them and plied them with details. 

“Gentlemen,” Lewis had said, incredibly brisk. “I’m only going to remind you of this once, but our success on this mission is contingent on us getting along, professionally and personally, without any confusing signals clouding our judgment. We have to be able to trust each other.” 

“Of course we trust each other, Commander,” Vogel had said, his voice businesslike. Mark loved how fucking serious the guy was all the time. 

“That’s not what she’s saying, mein Freund,” Mark had replied with a wry smirk. “She’s telling us not to hit on Johanssen.” 

Lewis, to her credit, didn’t rise to the bait. “Correct, Watney,” she had said instead. “I don’t need to remind you that fraternization is strictly prohibited. If anything happens before the mission, you’re both off.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Commander,” Martinez backed up. “Are you giving her this speech?”

“Also, what if Martinez and I want to fraternize? It’s 2034.” 

“Catholic, bro.” 

“Hasn’t stopped anyone.” 

She’d ignored their sidebar. “If I give it to you four, I don’t have to give her the speech too,” she reasoned. "And she doesn’t need it. It's fine to joke around together, but there's a line, and you should all give that line a very wide berth." 

“She kind of needs it,” Martinez had snorted, but Commander Lewis was in an “I’m not listening to you” mood. 

“What happens if anything happens during the mission?” Mark had asked, because he can’t help himself. 

“I’ll eject you into space,” she'd joked, rising. “We good?”

“Good,” they had all said, Beck’s voice barely above a mumble. She’d turned on her heel and walked away.

“What was that all about?” Vogel had asked. 

“Beck’s got a cru-ush,” Mark had singsonged.

Beck threw a fry at him, then shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Weaksauce. 

“You know, Lewis might be against it, but I bet you could NASA to approve a space-sex study. I’ve always wondered what it would be like in 0 g’s.” Martinez had ribbed. "Annie Montrose would probably like some space babies. That's good PR, right?"

“It would be difficult to build the requisite speed and force truly passionate lovemaking required, I would think,” Vogel had said, and at that point, all three of the American guys had just _lost_ it.

Johanssen had wandered back over then — even though they’d only been training together for three weeks, they were already a team, and teams stick together. “What’s so funny?” she demanded, setting down her tray and stealing a fry from Beck. When Mark replied _the logistics of space sex_ , she stole a fry from his tray too, for being disgusting. 

The thing was, Beck was never trying to _hit_ on Johanssen, he had a straight-up, pull-her-ponytail-and-run-away _crush._ The type that, if there were normal circumstances and Johanssen was a normal girl, would best be served by an invitation to dinner and a movie, not a tequila shot and a midnight ‘sup text (not that Watney imagines that was Beck’s style. He’s a Yale MD/PhD, for fuck’s sake. Clearly not much game, but not the type to use such blatantly pathetic and/or careless material). But he never technically violated Lewis’s edict during mission prep. He was, instead, a perfect gentleman. 

Which, now that they’re on a ship hurtling toward Mars, just makes it more fun for Watney and Martinez to try and debase him with a throwaway comment every so often. Beck gives as good as he gets and never cops to crushing on everyone’s favorite nerd, but all three (and Vogel, when he wants to get in on it — the more, the merrier) are on the constant lookout for Johanssen or Lewis floating by. Eventually, though, the work of the mission takes over and it fades into the background, a constant rule of nature on the Hermes: Don’t touch the chem cam; the gummy bears are Lewis’s and hers alone; give Martinez and Vogel have an extra five minutes on the linkup with their kids; Beck has a thing for Johanssen. It’s not exactly popcorn-worthy, but it’s an electrical undercurrent to their existences. 

One night, about six weeks into the journey, Mark (somewhat uncharacteristically) can’t sleep. He checks on his plants, which haven’t grown much in the four hours since he last logged their status, then meanders through the gym. His wakefulness isn’t something that can be jogged through, though, so he keeps walking through the acceleration chambers until he hits the Rec. Somewhat surprisingly — the Commander is militant that they spend the entirety of lights out in their chambers trying to rest, and hypocritically roams the bridge, airlocks, and command all night to ensure that — Beck’s there, in NASA sweats on the couch, his feet propped up as he stares out the bay window. 

“You ever wonder if we’ll fall when the well turns upside down?” Mark asks jokingly, to announce himself.

“Once you tell me where up or down is in space, I’ll answer that question,” Beck shoots back. 

“Getting philosophical tonight, are we?” he sits down. “Pondering the great unknowns in the universe?” 

“Nah, that’s the day job. I just couldn’t sleep,” he turns to Watney. “What about you? Do you need a sleep aid?” His voice drifts briefly into Ship Doctor Mode. 

“Only if you take one; chill out, Doctor. If you have one of your nerd articles though, that could do the trick.” 

He points to the tablet discarded at his side. “There’s a journal article I wrote on the effects of sustained low-grade radiation on the mitochondrial DNA production of mice on there, if you want.” 

“Pass,” he smirks. “So really, why’re you up?” 

He stubs his toe against the table. “I actually got my first post-mission job offer today, actually. In the data dump.” 

“They realize you’re not exactly free for the next year to come in for an interview, right?” Watney jokes. “What’s the job?” Beck’s been working for NASA for five years, as a scientist and as an astronaut, but it makes sense that he’d leave after this mission. There’s no place to go after Mars. It’s not like they’re sending manned missions to Pluto anytime soon (Sidenote: he’s really happy that little guy’s a planet again.).

“Scientist and faculty member at Yale. My own lab, the whole deal.”

He seems bummed about the offer. “You know you have, like, a whole year to make any decision, right?” Mark asks.

“Yeah,” he sighs and cracks his neck, clearly contemplating his path forward. “What do you want to do after this?”

“Well, first I want to walk on Mars. You know, kiss the Martian soil, try and grow some beans there or something. After that —” he laughs. “Who cares? I’ll have walked on Mars. Insta-cred, wherever I go.”

“You ever think you want the whole kids-family-dog show?” Beck’s voice is carefully neutral. 

Mark shakes his head. He’s a couple — maybe three? five? — years older than Beck and decided this a long time ago. “Nope.”

“Never?” Beck asks skeptically.

“Nah. Since college I’ve never lived any place more than two years — and I’ve never wanted to. I think I’m more of the fun-uncle type than a dad type. You think Martinez will let me steal his kid and sugar him up when we’re back? Vogel’s kids will see right through me.” He likes his work, he likes his ability to pick up and go to Mars or Uganda whenever he wants. He’s been in love with women plenty of times, but he’s more in love with the adventures. “I don’t need kids for a legacy. But it’s OK to want that.” It’s one of the more sincere things he’s ever uttered on the ship, and he’s pretty proud of himself. Maybe the next career move is Mark Watney, Advice Columnist. Help for the lovelorn overachievers everywhere. “If you take the Yale job, there are probably tons of hot co-eds who would want to date the astronaut professor.” 

Beck snorts. “I know that I’m, like, a lot younger and more attractive than you, but I’m not exactly into hopping into bed with undergrads. You know 22-year-olds today don’t even remember when Obama was president, right?” 

Mark can’t help but needle. “I dunno. I’m not sure someone born in 2006 would have many actual memories of Obama’s presidency, but you have no trouble making conversation with Johanssen.” 

He rolls his eyes, hard. “Beth’s different. We’re on a tiny ship accelerating at two millimeters per second per second through space for the foreseeable future, right? Everyone has to get along. We have matching friendship tattoos and everything. It’s a done deal.”

“Oh, so she’s Beth now?” he jokes, but he’s genuinely becoming convinced that the crush has zoomed past affection into something scarily close to resembling love, which is … well, incredibly damn problematic. While they’ve made fun of him, it's clear that it's beginning to get to Beck, for whatever the fuck reason Watney can't quite fathom. But confronting an open secret makes a secret, well, real, and they can't have that. The open secret needs to stay, well, secret. For everyone’s sakes. 

“Oh my god, this again. She’s a friend. Martinez is a friend. Vogel’s a friend. Even you’re a friend. Lewis … well, Lewis is a captain, but she’s also a friend. And yeah … Eventually we’re going to call each other by more than our last names, right? Once the mission is over?”

“You OK tonight?” he asks frankly. “Because this is some deep brooding, and you know you can’t turn around the ship and get some space, right? Well, you know … emotional space. The ship’s got plenty of actual space.” 

He rubs his face. “I’m fine. Can’t sleep. Potentially delirious, but fine.” 

Mark stands at the window — it’s really fucking cold; he should have slippers — and says, not unkindly, “OK, I’m dishing it to you straight. Consider yourself lucky. You’re here, for another year. We have a month on Mars coming up. It’s the chance of a professional fucking lifetime, and you’re too good — and, not unrelatedly, _too essential to the rest of us not dying_ — to not take advantage of that. Look outside! The universe is huge, and fascinating, and I don’t think we’ll ever quite understand how the fuck it works. But we keep trying to, and that’s the point. Life is long, and you have plenty of time when you’re back on Earth to figure out Yale and the wife-kid-dog thing. And if you want kids … You’re a fucking astronaut, who lived on Mars. You’re going to do just fine. And just … do one thing, really well, right now. You’re not as smart as I am, but you’re decently smart. Don’t fuck up this shit by trying to figure the rest of that shit out, alright? Do _this_ —” he gestures around the Hermes — “and then do _that_.”

Beck smiles ruefully, then stands, clearly ready to be done with Mark’s shitty-ish pep talk. “Sounds good. I’m heading to bed, I think. You staying up?”  
He nods. He’s still not tired, and this conversation has weirdly given him some food for thought. “Yeah. Gonna contemplate the mysteries of the universe a little longer, I think.” 

“Sounds good. Have a good night, Watney. And … thanks. I think.”

“Night?” He tips two fingers at Beck, who pads toward the crew quarters. Watney sits, staring out the window again, as the gravitational well-wheel turns. His voices dips low into soap-opera voiceover territory as he thinks that final thought. 

_Seriously, how cool is it that they don’t fall when they’re turning upside down?_

The universe is pretty fucking miraculous sometimes.


	4. Dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're no longer on the _Hermes_ , but they can still finally make that dinner together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys this totally counts as a drabble, right?

_Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve. — Max Planck_

Chris knew from previous missions — and even before, really; since he signed up with NASA — that returning home wasn’t as simple as hopping off the shuttle and hanging up your space suit. There are debriefs and media interviews, sure, but there are mostly medical evaluations. Even though he’d regularly been carefully tracking the crews’ heart-muscle deterioration and white-blood-cell count, even though they’d all followed a careful regime of weightlifting and cardio and kept excellent, NASA-controlled diets, acclimating back to Earth after two-plus years in space was always going to be, well, a bitch. In a nice twist of karma, Watney, since he’d spent 18 fewer months floating around, was actually in better shape, osteopathically and oncologically, than the rest of them (though malnutrition, infection, and injury did a more-than-serious-enough number on him). All six of them spent a solid month under close observation by NASA, dismissed only once certain biometric milestones were achieved. He spent thirty-seven days under eval; Beth spent forty-one. They’d left for a beach two days later and D.C. a week after that vacation. 

But it didn’t end then either. In exchange for their all-expenses-paid trip to space, they’d all agreed to participate in a lifelong experiment examining the effects of space travel on astronauts’ bodies. Chris knows the benefits (for them and for the greater scientific good), but he suspects, given the number overbearing emails reminding ( _him!_ the _doctor_!) of the importance of logging his bloodchecks and taking his vitamins regularly, that NASA’s going to make the twice-yearly pilgrimage a pain in the ass for the next several decades. 

Annoying as it is, though, he can’t complain, because they’re able to leverage the five days at Johnson into a reunion of sorts, where he’s surrounded by his most trusted friends and the woman he loves for the next week. They’ve scattered in the six months since their final dismissal, and it’s been lonely and challenging and different in a way he feels like he can’t complain about, since they aren’t lost in space: Commander Lewis and her husband are back in San Diego; Martinez has been stationed in Charleston; Watney started splitting time between Chicago and Houston, teaching botany in one and space-survival skills in the other. Vogel, happily ensconced in Germany, will eventually be monitored at Frankfurt but is back for this one and the next. After spending every day for more than four and a half years with the crew, it’s just weird not to see them constantly (though certainly nice not to have to sneak around like a teenager when he just wanted to make out with his girlfriend in zero gravity). NASA’s put them up in a mid-90s McMansion in Clear Lake, purchased and reserved for international astronauts training at JSC. There’s a pool out back, with a fire pit and two hammocks, and four bedrooms and a den for them to spread over — far roomier than the _Hermes_. 

_(“Don’t be too loud this week,” Mark had called when they’d scoped out the rooms and the two of them had snagged the master with the private bath.  
“If you survived what we did on the Hermes you’ll be fine here,” Beth had retorted.) _

Now, finally, they’re all unpacked, showered, and gathered in the kitchen, dipping into the cases of Beck’s that Vogel had brought as a gift. (He had brought the same beer the first time they’d met, partly because of Chris’s last name but mostly because it was Bremen’s most famous export.) After six months of questions and polite responses to personal inquiries, it’s overwhelmingly comfortable to finally be with the whole group again, but first — “It’s really _weird_ to see everybody in regular clothing,” he blurts out. It’s true: For most of the time they spent together, they were either in NASA-issued garb, whether it was jumpsuits, spacesuits, training uniforms, or space-resistant mission gear on the Hermes. Seeing them in colors other than navy, white, gray, and black is borderline bizarre.

They laugh, the ice finally broken. “Yeah, Beck, I _totally_ couldn’t recognize you without that blue sweater,” Martinez snarks.

“Really? Cause Johanssen spent more time wearing it than he did,” Watney digs. 

“The men’s sweaters were warmer than the women’s,” Beth protests, one hand up. 

“You liked it too, a little bit, though,” he says with a smirk, nudging her with his shoulder. 

“I liked the guy wearing the sweater quick a lot,” she reassures him teasingly. “But the sweater was warmer than anything in my kit, I swear.” She turns to Lewis. “Commander — Melissa — what’s our schedule?” 

“Tomorrow we’ve got individual physicals from 9-11, a panel for the Group 29’s and 30’s from 11:30-12:30, lunch with Venkat at 1, and cardiac tests from 2-5. Psych tests start Tuesday.” 

“Why do we have to talk to the cadets?” Beth asks, unenthused. 

“They want to hear what our experiences were like, and NASA said so,” Melissa shrugs. Chris decides to be OK with this schedule addition (as long as they don’t get the space-sex question again, which was all the cadets wanted to talk about last time).

“So, we have nothing tonight?” he checks. Nice. 

“Nope.”

“Anyone want to hit a bar? We haven’t done that since before the mission,” Martinez suggests. 

“I’d prefer to stick close to JSC, actually,” Beth says. 

“Still getting recognized?” Martinez surmises quickly. Besides Watney, Beth’s the crew member who’s gained the most attention in the wake of the mission — she’s the youngest, the inadvertently quotable one in interviews, the best-selling poster. Just today in the airport, dressed in black leggings and with dark sunglasses snapped over her face, two people had recognized her. (Him, on the other hand? In jeans, a NASA sweater, and glasses, he’d been practically invisible in the throngs of travelers.) While Mark can keep a decent sense of humor about it, Beth hates the extra looks with a passion, has even snapped at people who have pestered her while they’re in restaurants or at movies. 

“Only on days that end in _y_ ,” she says lightly. “But all six of us together? By JSC? It’ll be a mess. Nobody wants that.” That’s true. 

“We could make dinner,” Mark suggests.

“You mean, cook?”

“Yeah. We never made that Thanksgiving feast NASA sent. There’s a grill and a pit out back. Let’s make dinner.”

“I still remember how to get to the Piggly Wiggly in Taylor Village,” Beth volunteers. “I can pick up stuff for hamburgers.” 

“As long as you don’t _cook_ the hamburgers,” Chris laughs.

“I’ll grill,” Martinez calls. 

“And I’ll handle side dishes,” Beth says, the duties falling as evenly as they did on the Hermes. 

“Let us get sausages, as well,” Vogel decides.

“And I make a mean boxed-mix brownie,” Lewis volunteers. "I saw one in the cabinets." 

“Oooh, we should do smore’s!” Chris suggests. “Since we have a firepit.”

“Perfect,” Watney beams. “As long as there are —”

“No potatoes,” everyone choruses. 

“You know, the ones on Earth, they just don’t taste as good as the ones on Mars,” he drawls, clearly giving a practiced line. Beck wonders if he’s used the stranded-on-Mars thing as a pickup line yet. He should get some benefit from it. 

“Slow your roll, none of us are trying to sleep with you,” Martinez snickers. 

They split duties, with Beth, Martinez and Vogel heading to the store. Lewis starts to make the brownies, and he and Mark drag the patio furniture sets together and start the grill and fire pit. It takes a few tries — Macgyver-ing fire was a skill set Mark had actively avoided cultivating on Mars, and it’s been a long time since Chris’s Boy Scout days — but soon both the grill and fire pit are going. Beth and the other guys return from the store, meat and tons of fresh veggies in tow (it’s something they’ve all gravitated toward since returning). Soon they’re all chopping and prepping meat to Lewis’ disco tunes, and it’s nice, to be back in this unit where words aren’t necessary and they’re not expected to be on all the time. Beth assembles a salad, Vogel mixes up some stovetop mac’n’cheese, Martinez molds hamburger patties, and Commander Lewis pops the brownies in the oven. When _We Are Family_ starts on the speakers, he almost wants to start singing along. Within twenty minutes, their plates are loaded down and they’re gathered round the fire. It’s slightly cool for a September evening in Houston, which means the weather is perfect. 

“So,” Martinez says, chewing through half his hamburger in one bite, “You all remember Cressley?” 

“The pilot for Ares V? Yeah,” Beth says. The two of them are seated on a tiny wicker couch, and she’s got her head listed against Chris’s shoulder and chest as she finishes her burger. She’s wrapped in her old NASA hoodie, one that she hasn’t worn since they got back. As she shifts into the conversation, he tightens the grip around her waist. Ares IV, since it lost its MAV in Mark’s rescue, is now being rechristened Ares V, and is set to launch in … April 2040, Chris thinks. 

“His wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, and he asked to be excused from the mission. NASA asked me if I wanted to take his seat. I said yes." 

"What?" Lewis gasps. 

"Marissa is gonna _kill_ you," Beth adds, straightening entirely and moving out of Chris’s grasp. "Probably violently." 

"How are you still alive right _now_?" Vogel asks. "Johanssen is correct." 

"Well —" he starts, and it's immediately obvious that he has not, in fact, told her yet. 

"Shit," Mark says. “I’ve heard communication is important in a marriage. Never given the institution a spin, but I’m pretty confident it’s true.”

“It is,” Vogel affirms. 

"They just asked me today," he replies, hands spread. “The mission launches in eighteen months. They can’t just start from scratch.”

“So you didn’t ask her?” Chris checks, recalling something vital. “Rick, she’s four months pregnant. When Ares V launches, she’ll have a one-year-old and a five-year-old.”

"Why do you want to go back?" Lewis asks, gently. 

He shrugs. "I'm a _pilot_. Space wasn't an opportunity to enhance my skills or spend two years gathering research to keep my work going, it is my work. I can’t go back to earth and keep doing my job. Test piloting and training aren't the same. Marissa's known this since we were 15. She'll understand." He doesn't sound entirely confident on that point. “I’m going to be there for the whole first year, with our girl. Her mom’s moved in with us. She’ll be OK.” 

Chris and Beth exchange a look, and she nods. If they're sharing news ... “Well, just don’t get yourself killed before November 10th, okay?” he tells Martinez. 

“What is happening on November 10th?” That’s Vogel. 

Beth’s smile is coy and excited. “That’s when we’re getting married.” 

“What?” Lewis gasps again. 

“Come on! I’ve been wearing a ring since I stepped off the plane,” Beth laughs.

“Since two weeks ago, actually,” Chris corrects with a grin, because damn, he’s happy. It had been such a simple decision that he’s not sure why they'd waited nine months since their return. 

“It’s not — it’s ruby. Ah. I just assumed it was a piece you owned from before, since we couldn’t wear jewelry on the mission,” Lewis leans forward to inspect Beth’s dangling hand, which she tilts forward happily. “Red. For Mars?” It’s very simple and unfussy, which is good given that Beth’s style tends toward the minimalist: A modest rectangular ruby flanked by two diamonds in an delicate gold setting.

“It’s a nice touch, but no. It was Chris’s great-grandmother’s.” 

“They were married for 68 years and both lived past 90, so I figured it was good luck.” His mother, unsure of what to do with it, had inherited it nearly three decades ago. It was the only successful marriage in his family tree, so he figured it was worth emulating. 

“Are you two thinking D.C.?” Watney asks.

“No, we’re doing the ceremony at San Francisco’s City Hall,” Beth replies. "It'll be very small, just immediate family and close friends. I think it's 35 or 40 people, tops. We’ve got a restaurant booked for dinner under Chris’s sister’s name.” 

“Amy lives in San Francisco, and Beth’s family’s always been there,” Chris explains. “You’ll all make it?”

“Hell yes,” Martinez says. 

“It is OK if I bring Helena and the children, yes?”

“Of course!” Beth replies. 

“When’s the bachelor party?” Mark asks.

“Uh…”

“Whatever, we’ll plan one,” Martinez cuts in excitedly.

“Can you even leave JSC now?”

“On my honor as best man —”

“We never —”

“Co-best-man —” Watney interjects. “Don’t cut me and Vogel out without at least letting us make our cases.” 

“You both do know I have a college roommate, right?” 

“I will go AWOL just for this. It will be the best court martialling in the history of JAG.” 

“I’d defend you, Martinez,” Mark says seriously. “Though seriously, Chris, you want me. You two wouldn't be together without my email." That's actually totally false, but they'll give Mark that one. "Remember: I was stranded on Mars. Free drinks and strippers all night.” 

“Yeah, _no_ strippers,” Beth says flatly. “That’s rule number one. Rule number two is don’t tell Annie Musgroves.” 

“We don’t want whatever attention or interviews or photos. We’ll tell NASA, and our current bosses, after,” Chris explains. That is slightly risky since they both need security clearances at work, but he figures it'll be ok. 

"You know, one of these days, Annie is going to get the impression we don't like her," Martinez says lightly. 

"We like her fine. We just don't want her knowing anything about us, ever," Watney replies. 

"Anyways, a toast," Alex says, tipping his bottle of beer. "Rilke says that to love another is the most difficult of all our tasks, the work for which all other work is but preparation. Luckily, the two of you have had much preparation. We wish you the best for a long and happy and adventurous life." 

"That's probably not going to be a problem for them," Watney cracks. 

"Mars was an adventure, but marriage is one of an entirely different type and magnitude," Melissa says, ignoring Mark. "To Chris and Beth." 

Their friends chorus their names, and raise their glasses. She burrows tighter into his side, and he kisses her temple. This — this feeling, this place, these people — are something that’s only available on Earth. He’s never going to take it for granted.

Hours later, after they’ve rehearsed how Martinez is going to tell Marissa that he’s just signed up for another tour of space duty, after they’ve compared tattoo fade, after they’ve tried to convince Alex that Houston is just as nice as Bremen to raise a family, after Watney has entertained them with stories of women trying to pick him up, they’re sitting in a comfortable quiet as they stare at the night sky. He and Beth have moved into one of the hammocks, and Mark and Melissa are feet-to-head in the second. Martinez has sprawled over the tiny couch, and Vogel’s feet are propped on the coffee table as he’s slouched in one of the rattan chairs. The fire, littered with crumbs from the s’mores, crackles besides them. They lazily call out names of constellations once they’ve identified them. Aquila. Cygnus. The Little Dipper ( _“Really, Martinez? Hundreds of constellations and you find the fucking Little Dipper?”_ ). Capricorn. Delphinus. Orion. Indus. Pegasus. Eventually, everyone’s eyes settle on Mars. It’s faint in the sky.  
“How far away is it right now?” Beth inquires, yawning.

Vogel calculates in his head. “Farther away than typical. About 340 million kilometers.” 

“Sometimes I can’t even _fathom_ we traveled that far, you know?” Martinez says. “Not that the spacecraft did that. That _we_ did that.” 

Mark’s head pops up. “You better. You’re going back.”

“You know what I mean,” Martinez, for once, doesn’t rise to the bait, and just shakes his head. 

The strange thing is, Chris totally does. They take a lot for granted in space travel — that human ingenuity will prevail, that _of course_ man can go to Mars and of course Mark can hack his way back to earth — that sometimes it’s easy to treat the universe as a puzzle to be solved, to treat it as the great unknown and to lose perspective on the human side of things. The science aspect, the universe angle, that’s the easy part. The fact that all of that brought him to these people, that they’re here half-drunkenly stargazing in the backyard of a generic suburban Houston home. That’s the great unknown. 

Sensing him drifting, Beth shifts a bit closer to him, her chest and hips bumping into his torso. “Earth to Chris,” she whispers, quietly enough that the others can’t hear her. Her eyes shine brightly even in the dark. She pokes him on the soft spot just under his rib. 

Their combined weight means they’ve sunk deeply into the hammock, meaning nobody can see them, so he kisses her a little more forcefully than he does when they’re otherwise around the crew. It’s to remind her — and him — that he’s present. “I’m right here,” he assures her, voice still as soft as a promise.


	5. Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uncle Mark explains the benefits of poop potatoes.

“OK, Stella, you’re going to want to gently use that trowel to turn the dirt. Like, _pet-the-kitty_ gentle, not _beat-the-scary-monster-under-your-bed_ gentle,” Mark instructs. Seven-year-old Stella Beck, whose self-possession has terrified him since she was fourteen months old, just laughs at him, though she starts to sift the dirt more gently. “Luce, bring that bag of fertilized soil over here.”

Lucy Martinez, aged eight going on eighteen, drags the plastic sack across the Becks’ backyard, careful not to get any dirt on her pink sneakers. “David says there’s poop in this dirt,” she says doubtfully.

“No, I said Uncle Mark used poop to grow poop potatoes,” David, dragging a hoe through the patch where the sweet corn is going to go, corrects his sister.

“Potatoes are made from _poop_?” Stella cuts in, disgusted. “Grosssssssss. Does that mean there is poop in my French fries?”

“Poop is natural. It comes from your body,” Mark points out, watching both girls’ jaws drop. “It’s good for plants, but no, there is not poop in this soil that I know of.” 

“I like poop,” Noah Beck, sitting on the brick path sorting seed packets, announces. Aged four, he’s a moppet, personified: His mom’s dark eyes, his dad’s pout and dark hair, and, somehow, _curls_. Because his gene pool had decided to crank the cuteness up to eleven. Next to him, Daniel Martinez, also aged four and at an eleven on the cuteness scale, nods in agreement. Two months younger than Noah (and a total surprise to his parents), the doe-eyed introvert has always had to fight for attention among the four older loudmouths, and he usually finds verbal communication passe. Mark has a hunch the kid is probably the smartest of them all. “It’s a funny word. Poop. _Poooooooooooop_.” He directed this mostly at his sister. 

“You’re disgusting too,” Stella sighs, unsure how she can possibly deal with such a hopeless case for a little brother. In Converse high-tops, black leggings, a blue Yale hoodie, and a blonde ponytail, she’s less high-maintenance than Lucy, but that really isn’t saying much. Miss Universe is less high-maintenance than Princesa Lucia. Stella turns to her honorary uncle, clearly put upon. “You promise we’re not going to touch any poop?”

“Promise,” he says, holding up three fingers. “Martian honor.” 

“And we’re going to get melons out of this?” she says dubiously. They’ve been at work all afternoon across eight raised plant beds, and the kids are no longer buying what he’s selling.

“In this bed, yes. And then you’re going to get cucumbers, and tomatoes, and kale, and peas. Sweet corn over where David is. And peppers and squash and onions and beans and a bunch of herbs. It’s going to be delicious, I promise.” 

“And you have to let us eat it whenever we want,” David says assertively to Stella.

“There’ll be plenty to go around, Big Man,” Mark says. “OK, Daniel, Noah? We’re ready for the seeds.” 

“I want to plant them,” Noah says.

“We all get to plant some, Noah, Uncle Mark _already said_ ,” Lucy said. “I want to do the melons. They’re prettiest.” 

“They’re all just seeds right now, Lucy,” David, truly aggrieved now, says. It’s tough being the oldest. 

“Whatever. I need to take off my shoes, since these are designer and can’t get dirty.” 

“Oh, my god, Luce, they’re Zahara Jolie Pitt for _Target_ ,” David groans. “Uncle Mark, can we send her inside?” 

“Everyone gets to plant something, alright? You’ve got sweet corn, go handle sweet corn. Luce, sure, you can have melons, and it’s OK to take off your shoes. Stell, start out with the tomato seeds. Daniel, Noah, we’re going to start with peppers.” He doesn’t know how Chris and Beth or Martinez and Marissa handle this day in, day out. Fun uncle was clearly the best move forward. “Sounds good? Everyone have a job?”

“Yes, Uncle Mark,” they chorus, looking like the ragtag orphans in a Broadway musical.

He smiles. He likes hanging out with these kids, a lot. He’s technically in D.C. to speak with the House Subcommittee on Space Crap (not their official title) about continued funding for the colonization project (stalled since 2038) one of the main projects he’s now overseeing for NASA. He’d turned the four-hour meeting on Monday into an extra-long weekend spoiling the Fab Five who lived three miles apart in the suburbs. Bossy Beck and Beth Beck (best names ever) lived in Bethesda, close to both the NIH (where Chris oversees cancer research and clinical trials) and the NSA (where Beth does stuff that she can't talk about); Martinez and Marissa lived in down the road in Tenleytown, so Marissa could lawyer in D.C., and Martinez could pilot Air Force One (pretty badass, though Mark isn’t going to tell him that). Add in the fact that Lewis now runs the Women’s Leadership Institute at the Naval Academy in Annapolis and he’s basically visiting every other month. Today, while their parents were at work and the kids were off for a teacher inservice, he’d conscripted all of them into becoming Junior Botanists, which led to him taking over much of the Becks’ backyard. He probably should have checked if this was OK with Beth first. Whoops. 

“But did you _really_ eat poop potatoes?” Stella asks, several minutes of seeding later. 

He sighs. “I did, yes.”

“How?”

“Well, soil —” he rubs some through his fingers, showing it to all the kids, who have gathered around him, “has tons of nutrients in it. Organic nutrients, that help plants grow. Martian soil has none of that. So without those nutrients, I couldn’t grow any potatoes. And I needed the potatoes for calories.” 

“And poop is nutritious?” Stella asks, not buying it.

Lucy starts laughing maniacally. “Yummy, nutritious poop!” she shrieks, barely able to contain herself with the hilarity of it all. 

“Basically,” he laughs too. “Poop is _organic_ , so I was able to mix it with some Martian soil with some soil samples I had brought. Once they all mixed together —” he swirled his hand in the dirt, “the nutrients were able to spread, and I was able to grow potatoes.”

“Poop potatoes,” Stella corrects. 

“Tasted the same, I promise,” he deadpans.

“And now you’re using poop potatoes to colonize Mars?” That was David. 

“I want to use a similar method,” he corrects. “If we’ve got a food biome, we won’t need too much to get it going. Then it’ll be self-sustaining.” 

“What happens if the biome rips like the Hab did?” David knows a lot about the mission.

“We’re going to have two layers, both attached to an airlock.” Grabbing a stick, he etches out a rudimentary drawing. “That way, if one canvas is breached, we’ll know — and can repair it — before the second one is. Bingo.” 

“Can we go live on Mars?” Stella asks.

“That’s a decision you can’t make until you’re a grown-up and you’ve learned how to drive,” he says frankly. “Though I think your moms and dads would miss you a lot.” 

“I could go and leave Daniel and David here,” Lucy suggests. 

“Did you eat the poop?” Noah asks.

“Nope. It just went into the dirt.”

“Did the potatoes on Mars taste different?” That’s Daniel, and Mark mentally cheers for getting the kid to speak.

“Same as on Earth,” he swears. “I didn’t have any salt, or ketchup, or anything tasty, after a while, so a little boring. But same as on Earth.”

“Did you eat anything else made of poop?” Lucy is still not having it. 

“That was the only thing, I promise,” he says. 

“Poop pancakes sound tasty,” David muses, teasing his sister.

“Poop ice cream,” Mark suggests.

“Poop waffles!” Daniel shouts. 

“Poop sandwich,” Noah giggles. 

“Poop salad, with diarrhea dressing!” Lucy finally joins in, laughing. He’s impressed by the gag-worthiness of that visual. 

“This is super gross. I’m done,” Stella drops a trowel. “I’m never eating another vegetable again.” 

“That’s … not a great policy,” Mark says. It’s actually a policy that will lead to Chris killing him, which is problematic since he’s Stella’s godfather and he imagines that would be traumatizing.

“You promise I will _never have to eat poop_?” Stella demands, and her pixie-like anger makes her so much like her mother that it’s scary.

“Promise,” he swears. “Now, will you come learn how to take care of the garden?” 

“We have to add water, right?” 

“Yeah, you need to water them every morning. Add it to your chore list, Stella and Noah. David, Lucy, Daniel, you probably won’t be able to help with this, so you’re going to have to come over every weekend to help weed. Got it?”

“Got it,” the kids respond. 

“Good. On the weekend you’re going to pull out the weeds, and test the ph. David, I’m going to show that to you this weekend. Got it?”

“Yup, Uncle Mark.”

“Knew you would. Now, once the seedlings are 4-6 inches tall, you’re going to need to mulch them with straw. Stella, Lucy, this is your job.” 

“Got it,” they reply. 

“What’s our job, Uncle Mark?” Noah asks.

“Noah, you need to come out here every day and check if there are any bugs or anything on the plants. Got it?”

“Yup!” 

“And my job?” Daniel asks. 

He crouches to Daniel’s level. “You have the most important job of all, Daniel-san. Whenever you come over, you have to look at the plants really carefully, and you have to call me and tell me how they’re doing.” 

“Yes, sir!” Daniel says, giving him a huge hug.

“What’s happening here?” Beth Beck materializes somehow behind them all, dressed in a blue sweater and a leather jacket. “Seriously, what happened to my backyard?”

“Mommy!” Noah yells, jumping into her arms. She kisses his forehead. “We planted a garden,” he informs her.

“I can see that,” she says. “Uncle Mark, care to explain?”

“Well, it all started when Lucy asked if pistachios were vegetables since they were green —”

“ _They_ weren’t green, my secret breakfast pistachio ice cream was green,” Lucy corrects defensively. Proud of her newfound knowledge, she adds, “Pistachios aren’t vegetables; they’re cashews that grow on trees.” 

“Luce, what’s the most important part of secret breakfast ice cream?” her brother asks.

“Poop,” the third-grader says, her face falling as realization hit her.

“We’ll discuss that later,” Beth replies, an eyebrow cocked. 

“Anyways, so dear Lucy inquired whether or a pistachio could count as a vegetable since it was green. And then after a few brief questions I discovered the Fab Five know nothing about botany, though they seem to know plenty about the physics of flying, computer programming, and anatomy. Which just seems unfair, really. So we went to the hardware store and started a tiny garden.” 

“ _Tiny_ is sure one word for it,” Beth says, not won over. She runs a hand through her hair. “I’ve seen farms with less crop land.” 

“We’ve gone over the instructions. The kids are good with how to manage it.”

“I’m testing ph levels,” David says.

“Noah and I are watering in the morning.”

“Stella and I have to mulch.” 

“I’m checking for bugs!”

“And I tell Uncle Mark how everything is going.” 

“And in five months we have all the vegetables we’ll ever need,” Mark finishes up.

“And melon,” Lucy adds.

“And melon.” 

“This is awesome, and I'm so proud of you. But that’s a ton of work, you know, you guys,” Beth says. “And with gymnastics and robotics and basketball you’re pretty busy. You sure you have enough time to take this on?” 

“That’s a good point,” Uncle Mark says, an idea formulating. “I guess I just have to visit every month!”

“Really?!?” Stella exclaims, jumping into his arms. “Really really?” 

“If your parents will let me, I don’t know how they feel about me,” he pulls a faux-concerned face. 

“You can be just as childish as they are, Watney,” she says, affectionately patting his face. “Of course you can always come. Just don’t turn my living room into an aquarium next, OK?” 

“Deal,” he smiles.

“Alright, kids, get inside and get washed up,” Beth says, inspecting Noah’s incredibly dirty hands. “Aunt Melissa and Uncle Rob are going to be here soon, and then we’re all going out to dinner.” 

A series of “yes”es and “yay”s emanate, and they drop their tools and run for the door. “Shoes!” Beth yells. There are ten thuds of shoes hitting the brick patio as the kids bottleneck through the sliding back door. 

Beth turns to him as he gathers trowels and hoes and excess soil. “You sure you want to spend a weekend a month taking care of this? I would help out, but I would probably kill everything first.” 

“Ohhhh, I know. I remember what happened to my plants on _Hermes_. Please do not touch any of this,” he gestures. “Hey, as long as you’ve renamed the guest bedroom the Watney Retreat —”

“You put that sign up—”

“—I’m very happy to spend as much time as possible with the kiddos.” He slings an arm around her shoulder as they head in. “People might think it’s pretty damn epic that I grew poop potatoes on Mars, but what you guys are growing here? Infinitely cooler.”

“Thanks,” she smiles. “Also, I knew about the secret breakfast ice cream. Stella gave up that one about three years ago.”

He laughs uproariously.


	6. First Date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Upgrading this to a "series of one-shots" because brevity is not my strong suit.
> 
> Happy Back to the Future Day!

_Falling in love is not at all the most stupid thing people do, but gravitation cannot be held responsible for it — Einstein_

They had a policy, to not talk about the future. Certainly not about their feelings about said future. Definitely not about the specifics. It had worked for them — there was a mission to focus on, and it let whatever was happening develop in a somewhat low-key manner. They couldn’t help the fact that they lived together for several months before they first kissed; that they were forty percent of a tiny team hurtling through space sharing 4,000 square feet of flight deck and bridge and labs and gym and dorms; that their lives dependent on their emotions staying clear of their judgment; that they couldn’t even go on a date even though they’re sharing a twin bed in a 5x10 bunk. They needed to give themselves as much space as they could to figure stuff out. Plus, they were astronauts on a Hail Mary rescue mission to Mars. Life on Hermes was stressful, and delicately constructed, and just plain weird, so they’d carefully resisted definition and expectation. Nothing about their circumstances was going to change any time soon, at least not for the better. It was easier if they just focused on the moment. The mission. Mark. 

She’s told him she loved him, and she isn’t sure if she’s ever called him her boyfriend. 

Now, though, the end is in sight. They’d scooped Mark up as he zoomed through space, and were now on a trajectory that put them 211 days away from Earth. Dangers remain, but for the first time in a long time, the mission has an end, and the post-mission future, while fuzzy, seems assured. And in that purposeful space something has developed; while it’s not like they’re making out in the airlocks, it’s solid. But as what, she’s not entirely clear. Like the fact that she is sitting on this couch in the Rec and not floating above it, their relationship been manipulated by the airless environment of the _Hermes_. On Earth, it could very well be entirely different. 

They’ll be home on December 21, just in time for Christmas. They’ll have missed three Thanksgivings. She wonders where — fine, with whom — she’ll spend her first Christmas back on Earth. 

There’s a commotion as someone starts clamboring into the Rec from the Knuckle. It’s tricky, to go down the shaft from zero gravity to .8 g’s, the amount generated by the rotating gravity drum. She looks up to see Chris clumsily shimmying down the ladder. “Thought I’d find you here,” he says cheerfully. He loves having someone to look after, and the chance to doctor Mark — and Mark’s return — has put him in his element. 

“There are about two places to look,” she retorts, but teasingly. He comes over and sits close to her, and she throws her legs over his thighs comfortably. She hopes this is the future. “How’s Mark doing? How’re his X-rays?” 

“About what we expected,” he answers, mindlessly running stroking the inside of her leggings-clad calf. It’s a bit surprising they’re alone, but she’ll take it. “Three broken ribs, but no internal bleeding that I can see. No other broken bones, but a hairline fracture in his left clavicle. We have a lot of work to do, but he’s not in bad shape, considering. He’d done field surgery on a couple of injuries, which I re-stitched. And he’s got shingles.”

“People under the age of 80 can, you know, _get_ shingles?” she asks, amused.

“Mark’s been the first at plenty of things recently,” he replies, and she supposes that’s true. “What are you doing?”

She shakes her head as if to banish the thought, then hooks her elbow onto the back of the couch and props her temple against her fist. “Nothing, actually,” she says. 

His hand stills, a comforting weight on the sensitive underside of her knee. It’s a casually intimate gesture. “Really?” he’s not buying it. “Everything OK?”

“Yeah … Just thinking. We’ll be home before Christmas.” 

“Yeah, but barely. You should tell your parents to prep for a cafeteria-food Christmas at the JSC Med Center, since there’s no way we’ll be let out of the hospital before New Year’s. Maybe we’ll scope out a couple of honky-tonk recs in Houston; your dad will get bored with the Jello. I think he’d like the cowboy-bar scene.” She freezes at the word ‘we.’ Does he mention the-two-of-them we, or the crew we? She has always been terrible at this part, but never has it mattered so much. “Hey,” he says, using his free hand to brush hair away from her face. “Seriously. I lost you there for a second. What’s wrong?” 

She sucks in a breath, contemplates deflecting, then blurts out, “You said ‘we’ … and I’m not sure who ‘we’ is, back on Earth.” At his surprised look, she continues, “ _Hermes_ has been a bubble, and it’s about to burst.”

“Hopefully not before we get all the way home,” he jokes, and she pokes him, _hard_ , in his side. “I’m just saying, it’s been a stressful enough trip this far.” 

“My point — it’s just been this, been us, in this crazy, stupid context, and it’s worked. But we have Mark, we’re going home. We’ll be there in seven months, and it just suddenly seems … soon.” She sighs, stressed, again, and he doesn’t move away. “We haven’t … thought about it, or at least I haven’t, since first we thought we lost Mark, and then we found out he was alive, and then I thought I was going to have to maybe eat you, and then we added a year and a half to the mission, and the ship started slowly crumbling underneath us, and —”

“Hey, hey, hey,” he stops her mid-breakdown, drags a thumbpad along her cheekbone. “For the record, I meant the two of us when I was talking about getting out of the hospital at Christmas.” 

“Oh,” she says. “Well good.” 

“And yeah, I haven’t really thought past getting out of the hospital and grabbing five new books and going to a beach for two weeks, but I really want you on that beach. And then for … whatever happens afterwards. If that wasn’t clear.” 

“It wasn’t,” she informs him.

“Really? It’s been … This is good. I like this. I like us. I love you. And it’s been working for what, a year? More? Yeah. On a spaceship that might kill us, so I think we could survive a beach or sharing a one-bedroom apartment that is all to ourselves and has a lock to keep Martinez out.”   
She smiles broadly. “Now that part sounds nice. You think it’ll keep Watney out too? He’s going to be so smug and think his email led to us getting together.” They’d been sliding into … whatever they are, long before that email, but it had certainly helped to solidify things. 

“I think it can be arranged,” he grins, then darts his eyes around and kisses her lightly. 

“So this … is going to keep happening?” she checks, burrowing closer to him.

He stares at her strangely, a little guarded. “I mean, I’d like it to. Just with a bigger bed, I’ll be honest. Do you … not? You seem skeptical.”

“I do!” she reassures him. “It’s just, you know, I don’t think we’ve ever been on a date, so the signaling is just … off. This is … I … I love you, you know that, but this started as comfort between two friends who really trust each other and cared for each other at a time when they were emotionally vulnerable, so I’m just … checking.” She twist the cuticle on her thumb with her incisors, and peeks out from under her lashes. 

“Check away, because as far as I’m concerned this started when I found out there was a cute girl in a hoodie who scowled profusely before her third cup of coffee in my astronaut bootcamp, and you were won over by my considerable charms and karaoke skills.” 

She laughs a little at the memory (two words: Mark’s fault), because he makes her do that, and something hard and painful inside of her is quickly breaking. “OK, but Earth —”

“Which isn’t for another seven months —”

“It’ll be different. It’s not like we’ve had to argue about dishes or whether or not our mothers get along or whether or not it’s acceptable to buy four types of cereal at the grocery store. Who gets to drive, who pays the bills, who stays home from work to wait for the fiber-optic guy to come. Who … has to take out the garbage.” 

“Four types of cereal is only acceptable so long as there are at least two types of Cheerios so you can mix them, and let’s alternate taking out the garbage. However, I drove with you in Houston, and it’s my medical opinion that you are an unsafe driver, so I’d like to negotiate the chief-driver role.”

“I drive like a normal non-grandfather, so we’ll table that discussion. I’m serious, Chris. Real life is going to be different than here, and it’ll be hard in really boring ways. We can do life-and-death just fine, but that’s not what Earth is going to be. It’s not going to be all fun adventures like overriding NASA’s computer systems and doing EVA walks and rescuing Martians.” She wants to say I’m giving you an out, please let me know if you plan on taking it but she doesn’t trust herself to put that out there. 

He kisses her then, not darting his eyes around at all. “Beth Johanssen,” he says, very seriously. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I am incredibly excited to have a really boring life with you.” 

She laughs, hard, then. There are so many things to figure out — where they’re going to work, because she does not want to work for NASA; where they’ll live; who will pay the bills — but they’re going to do normal. “Alright then,” she smiles. “A really boring life. You better deliver, Doctor Beck.”

His eyes dart around again, and he kisses her, quickly. Three kisses in a conversation is damned unusual. “You know what I think this is?” he asks, teasing. 

“What?”

“You’re right. We haven’t had a first date. It’s unconscionable.” 

She raises her eyebrows at him and blinks. “Yes, because I’m the type who needs that.”

“You just said!” he grins, and he’s partially correct.

“It’s been somewhere between eleven and fifteen months, depending on where we start counting. We forgot an anniversary there, Beck. Hell, we don’t know when that anniversary is!”

“Mission Day 226,” he decides. 

She smiles, because she knows what day he’s decided to use. “I’m just saying. The farm’s long been given away. And there is no pizza, or beer, or candlelight, in our foreseeable future. And those are critical ingredients for a first date.” 

“Yeah, those are hurdles for ordinary boyfriends,” he says, gently shoving her legs off his lap and standing. “I’m an astronaut boyfriend. We’re specially made. I’m going to go see Watney’s test results — they should be back — but watch out.” 

“Oh ho ho, okay, Astronaut Boyfriend,” she laughs, picking up her tablet. 

That’s definitely the first time she’s used that phrase. 

Between the reports and Watney Watch, between the photos and the videos and the hordes of emails they’re trying to answer, between the ship’s continuing decay and their own continuing mission, she forgets the entire conversation about their lack of first date. Chris is round-the-clock consumed by Mark’s care, and some days she barely sees him for five minutes in the main corridor. Honestly, it’s somewhat of a relief — there are limits to how much time you can spend with someone, even if you’re planning a boring life together. Thus, she’s utterly surprised when she walks into their tiny, tiny, twin-bed-only bunk to grab a sweatshirt before getting some dinner and going back to upgrading the software on the coolant system (NASA had sent new patches to try and get Martinez’s and Watney’s rooms back online) when she notices a note on the pillow. _Come to the Rec — CB_. She laughs at the use of his initials. As if anyone else would leave her notes on her pillow. 

Grabbing the sweatshirt, she headed back to the Knuckle and down Chute C into the Rec. “Beck?” she calls, unsure of who’s around.

“Hey Beth,” he responds from over by the narrow galley. “Just us.” 

She looks around. The lights have been dimmed, there’s a blanket spread on the floor by the windows, and Paul McCartney’s Maybe I’m Amazed is playing on the speakers. “What’s going on? Where is everyone?” 

“I reserved the Rec,” he smiles, coming over and putting his hands on her hips. “All ours for the evening.” 

“We can do that?” she asks blankly. 

“If you beg,” he smiles, then kisses her chastely. She’s still confused though, and pulls away. 

“Commander Lewis is OK with this?”

“She agreed, but made it pretty explicit the things that we will not do on the couches.” 

“What is going on?”

“Beth? That first date?” Finally everything clicks, with a loud Oh. She claps a hand over her mouth. “I’m making make dinner. We have NASA’s finest sesame chicken for you, good old General Tso’s for me, and rehydrated egg rolls to split. We also have exactly one half-bottle of red wine, stored classily in a vacuum pouch for my birthday — traded for tonight — and two pieces of chocolate cake that we won’t put in the daily caloric-intake report. We’ll eat under the stars,” he gestures to the blanket, with its perfect view of the expansive universe, “and then we’ve got Back to the Future. Dinner, wine, movie. Textbook first date.” He’s smugly proud of himself. 

She impulsively grabs his face with both hands and reached up on tiptoe to kiss him. “I love you,” she says, kissing him again. It means many   
things.

They start with a few fingers of wine each — NASA only stocked enough wine for designated special occasions, so neither has really drank more than a few glasses in the twenty-three months since launch; besides, space gets you drunk fast — and prepare the meals in the microwave. Eating’s a total mess, since neither of them have used chopsticks for a while but it seems like the datelike thing to do. They catch up on the last few days — Watney’s health and reacclimation, an email from her mother, the buggy electrical panel that she spent most of the afternoon cursing.   
He leans back on splayed palms, and she tucks her head into his lap. Earth is a nickel-sized speck, glowing like an orb, in the distance; if she holds her thumb just so she can make it vanish. There’s a game they all play, that Vogel has christened Where Are They Now, where they guess what friends and family on Earth are doing, and they casually start naming people: _Where’s your dad right now? Where’s your sister? Where’s that ex-boyfriend Logan?_ for the other to guess their locations. 

“He’s clearly staring at my astronaut photo and thinking, how did I let that scrawny girl who regularly ditched me for math homework get away?” she laughs when he tosses Logan into the mix.

“Really?”

“Please. It’s seven p.m. Palo Alto time and his wife had a second kid sometime around the gravity assist. What do you think?” 

“I think he’s an idiot. Just as a policy.” 

“He’s actually very nice, and what we were barely qualifies as dating. Movie time?” 

"Sure," he stands, offering her a hand up. She takes it, and he pulls, propelling her body into his. She leans up to kiss him, hands going around his waist and pulling him toward the couch. 

“Making out — on the list of explicitly banned behaviors by Commander Lewis?” she checks, not moving away from him. 

“Gray area,” he murmurs back, sucking on her lower lip. She pushes him down on the couch and straddles him, resting her weight a few inches above his knees.They make out languorously for a few minutes, savoring the space and the private time and each other. His fingernails scrape her skin, just above her tailbone, and she pushes into the kiss more forcefully. He groans, and she pulls back slightly. Much as she’d love to keeping doing this she also really wants … “Movie?” Chris smirks, capturing her lips one more time.

She kisses him once more before rolling off his lap and curling into his side. With the tablet, he dims the lights further, kills the music, and rolls the film. It’s one of her favorites — obviously, that’s why he picked it — and there’s something nice about just sitting and watching a movie with him, but they’re back to making out by the time Doc and Marty meet in the parking lot. Most of the time on _Hermes_ , intimacy needs to be quick or quiet or both, and she hadn’t realized how constraining that was, had accepted it as good enough, was grateful for what they got (NASA’s shrinks had done their jobs well). No wonder she was not exactly clear on where they stood. Now she’s greedy for non-stolen moments. Her hands, under his sweater already, drift lower. With a grunt, Chris goes — “Beth. We’re like, ninety seconds away from explicitly banned behaviors.” They’re horizontal on the couch, one of her legs threaded through his, and she can feel him getting hard. 

She breaks away quickly, grabs the tablet, and toggles the film over to her personal laptop, which is up in their bunk. They can finish it tomorrow, or never. “Let’s go,” she commands, tugging him toward the ladder. 

His arms wrap around her stomach, and he kisses her neck as they walk. Before they climb up — back into the crew, back into their current real lives — he spins her around one more time. “Not sure where this falls on your rankings, but this was definitely my best first date ever.” 

“Agreed,” she smiles, “and not _just_ because it’s going to be good first-date sex this time.”

“True,” he replies. “Just don’t get used to it. We’ve got a lot of boring days ahead of us.”

Honestly, she cannot wait.


End file.
